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ROSEMARY PRESS BROCHURES 



THE VILLAGE BAND 

(A SERMON IN PUPPYREL) 



BY 



Nathan Haskell Dole 




Posemarv 



Privately printed for the use of the members of the 
CHILE CLUB 



Copyright 1922 
by Rosemary Press. 



DEC -2 72 



C1A691680 



*V\© J 






THE VILLAGE BAND 

(A Sermon in Puppyrel) 

By Nathan Haskell Dole 

Among the Berkshires lies a village, 

Whose straggling houses line the still edge 

Of somber hills, first cousins to mountains, 

From whose wild caverns flow the fountains 

That feed a wide and turbulent brook 

On which those straggling houses look. 

The landscape, called by artists charming, 

Has small advantages for farming; 

But Nature, seeming so penurious, 

Hid 'neath the hills, to tempt the curious, 

A marvellous inexhaustible store 

Of glittering sulfurous copper ore : — 

"Fools' gold" men sometimes call this treasure — 

A hoard that Ignorance could not measure 

And so for ages long neglected it, 

Till Science with her wand detected it; 

And then the sleepy little village, 

No more dependent on lean tillage, 

Became a prosperous mining-center, prizing 

The change accomplisht by the enterprizing. 

Among the innocent diversions 

Devised to obviate desertions 

And make the young men more contented 

(For Movies were not then invented!) 

There was a lively Village Band 



Which played in Summer in a stand 
Ornate, octagonal, many-colored 
To suit the taste of boor or dullard. 
Each Thursday evening and each Saturday — 
(Tho' more distinctive was the latter day — 
Approaching closely to an estival 
Commemoration, Fete, or festival) 
This famous rural Band assembled 
While still the Sun God's last rays trembled 
Across the forest-shrouded summits; 
But even darkness could not dumb its 
Enthusiastic rendering of medley 
Potpourri, polka, waltz or deadly 
Attempt to keep a march in time : — 
Their leader's efforts were sublime, 
And all the country population 
Provided with a generous ration 
Of peanuts, cornballs, cake and candy 
Met promenading through the sandy 
Deep-rutted littered street that skirted 
The small square where the young folks flirted, 
And old men doddered dully listening 
Half-hypnotized by brass so glistening. 

It was the weirdest aggregation 

Of instruments in all creation : 

A small Italian known as Niccolo 

Evolved weird wailings from the piccolo; 

But as he also blew the tuba, 

The horn and trumpet, was the Poo-bah 

And thought himself a stupid dunce 

Unable to play four at once, 

But still good-natured he succeeded 



In filling vacancies as needed. 

Two Teutons tooted a tout-ensemble 

That made the very heavens to rumble, 

Lavishing breath on black bassoons, 

Their red cheeks swelling like balloons. 

The ''popular clerk" of the Apothecary's 

(As papers put it) — in no wise loth, he carries 

The cymbals and the big bass drum 

(With a cling-clang, cling-clang, bum-bum-bum), 

And the bell-boy from the one hotel 

On the snare-drum raised a hectic Hell 

(To borrow from Billy Sunday's vocabulary 

Permitted by the State constabulary!) 

A farmer's son — his mother's pet 

Puft vigorously on the clarinet, 

And by good luck a wandering hobo 

Was found proficient on the oboe. 

A tall cadaverous foreign fellow 

(A Fin, I think) sawed at the 'cello 

And got a tone, though nasal, mellow. 

And a little Jew jabbed at the giant fiddle 

Tho ' he barel}* reacht up to its middle : 

How such long strings he manipulated 

Was marvellous; but I know he stipulated 

That they should furnish him a criket. 

He sighed contented: "Dot's der ticket!" 

The Leader tried to give the rhythm 

But time was hardly ever with him — 

Perhaps the joke is rather grim: 

We might say that the Time beat him. 

Ambrosial drafts one should imbibe 
Ere starting boldly to describe 



A concert by these rare musicians: — 
Such gasps and bangs, such blast-emissions. 
Such woful, awful, dire, cacophonies 
(Where pleasing melody not often is!) 
I will not try it, since the Muse 
To help me do it would refuse! 

One afternoon I took the road 

That skirted where the river flowed 

And wandered idly miles and miles, 

Up thro' the high hills' wild denies; 

Then turning as the darkness fell, 

I reacht a captivating dell 

And sat down in the evening hush 

To listen to the hermit thrush 

Whose sweet voice in the solitude 

With melancholy seemed imbued ; 

When suddenly my soul was stirred 

Not by the cadenced song of bird, 

But by a magic rush of sound 

Which seemed to flood from all around, 

As if it issued from the ground, 

As if it burst like vocal fountains 

Out from the bosom of the mountains, 

As if it came from upper air — 

A solemn Music — Nature's prayer! 

The shadow-brooding mountain-side 

I saw in fancy opened wide 

And in the high-arched temple vaulted 

Which lofty ebon piers exalted 

I seemed to see an organ buried, 

With rows of pipes in order serried — 

Bourdon and trumpet, reed and flute, 



And all the varied stops that suit 

The complicated harmonies 

Wrought by the Master on his keys. 

The Music that around me welled 

And all my raptured spirit held 

Seemed like the music of the Spheres, 

Not meant for sluggish mortal ears : — 

It rose and fell in shadowy waves 

Quite untranscribable on the staves 

That symbolize to eye and mind 

What those initiated find 

And by that secret inward ear 

Which hears more than one seems to hear. 

Not long did Fancy conjure treason 

Against superior human Reason. 

I knew full well that mountain-side 

No magic instrument could hide, 

That those weird melodies symphonious 

Were but the echoes made harmonious, 

Of that far-distant rustic band, 

Down at the village, in their stand ! 

And Mother Nature, sensitive, 

Had sifted with her fancy sieve 

The floating notes, confused and jarring 

Discarding those that might be marring, 

Selecting such as in their far ring 

Would be most pleasing to be heard 

By prowling fox or hermit bird, 

Or even by a wandering Poet, 

Who, finding loveliness, would know it. 

This seems to me a sort of parable — 

Here in this epoch harsh, unbearable. 



Where all the world is discord-blended, 
And Civilization's hope seems ended, 
We who are seated on the grand-stand 
And hear the orgy from the band-stand, 
Find only discord and cacophonies, 
Where naught to harmonize and soften is. 
But when we pass the Now's confusion, — 
I hope it will not be illusion — 
The echoes of the bitter strife 
Striking upon the hills of Life, 
Mayhap by Nature 's mystic sieve 
Undreamed-of harmonies will give ; 
The terrors of War's blatant brass 
Into the chords of Peace shall pass; 
The banging of the brutal drum 
Like a deep organ-tone shall come ; 
The cries of anguish shall be dumb! 



5 36 • 








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